Many a low-level employee has felt like a tyrannical boss or nightmare client is one inconvenience away from killing them, and have also felt the desire to do the same to them in turn. That impulse is the driving tension of A Talent for Murder, a new not-quite/not-quite-not murder mystery thriller from director Anton Corbijn.

Adapted from the Joanna Murray-Smith stage play Switzerland by the playwright herself, A Talent for Murder is a not-quite/not-quite-not chamber piece (you may notice a running theme here) about a young employee of a New York literary agency sent on a mission to Switzerland to track down famed novelist Patricia Highsmith (a fictionalized take on the real person) at her home and convince her to write one more book starring her most famous creation, Tom Ripley. Such affairs would not typically involve the threat of murder... but if they didn’t, we wouldn’t have much of a movie, now would we?

Alden Ehrenreich stars as Edward Ridgeway, who’s been ordered to get Highsmith (Helen Mirren) to sign a contract for one more Ripley book or he'll face the unemployment line. Highsmith is predictably highstrung (hah), irritable from the start, and domineering to the end. She wants nothing more to do with the talented Mr. Ripley, the suave sociopath who’s paid her bills for so long and is most known to audiences for being portrayed by a young Matt Damon in 1999. Not one to be deterred so easily, the seemingly naive Edward manages to worm his way into staying for one night at Highsmith’s hideaway house, giving himself time to see if he can pitch the plot for a new novel to the insular author, who may or may not have killed the last hapless employee saddled with the same objective.

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